Welcome to the very first F*Bomb porno review. Since starting SMUT CITY a couple of months ago, we here at F*Bomb have become all but obsessed with Golden Age porn. Spanning the period of time from when hardcore porn became mostly legal (late 60s) to the era when home video glutted the marketed and crapped on the quality (mid 80s), the Golden Age produced a treasure trove of pornographic features that are everything modern porn isn’t. They tend to have plots, acting, cinematography, editing, themes etc… basically all the qualities that separate a “film” from a compilation of badly shot footage of copulation. Reviews of these high quality XXX features are just one of many exciting new things coming to F*Bomb.

For our first review, we’re going to be looking at Chuck Vincent’s VOYEUR.

Voyeurism is a fairly obvious theme for a pornographic film. After all, it’s impossible to watch any sort of porn without engaging in at least a little voyeurism. Though the same could be said about traditional cinema, the acting and production outside of porn is usually more high quality and apparent, making the voyeuristic aspects more subdued than the rawness that comes with two people fucking in front of a camera.  That being said, there are two notable directors whose work explored these themes – Hitchcock and DePalma – and Vincent homages both quite liberally.

Voyeur‘s plot is a loose mix of Rear Window and a standard private detective story. Robert Bullock stars as Julius Kurtz, a disgraced dirty cop who got kicked off the force and is driving a cab for a living when one day a fare offers him a lucrative job. The guy is an attorney and he needs someone to do some surveillance work for an anonymous client, citing something about insider trading and corporate takeovers as the reason why. Bullock accepts the gig and quickly becomes fascinated with the then state-of-the-art video equipment he’s given.

After testing out the equipment with his beautiful lady Shelly (played by an extremely sexy pre-blonde Taija Rae), Bullock sets up shop across the street from his target’s apartment and starts surveilling. This being a pornographic film, it comes as little surprise that his target is an attractive lady (Sheri St. Claire) who seems to do little but engage in blatant sexual activity out on her balcony.

The more Bullock watches St. Claire, the more obsessed he becomes, especially as his investigations into who she is or the identity of the mysterious client that hired him turns up nothing but dead ends. Back at home, his relationship with Rae begins deteriorating since Bullock stops sleeping, keeps trying to film her butt while she’s sleeping, and watches the tapes he’s made of St. Clair over and over.

Though Bullock’s descent into voyeuristic obsession and the eventual reveal of the mysterious client are fairly standard thriller fodder, Vincent’s frequent cinematographer Larry Revene (who directed the AMAZING Raw Talent) takes maximum advantage of the inherent possibilities of the theme. Aside from a lot of killer point-of-view shots for when Bullock is filming, and great moments where he watches and rewinds a tape endlessly, the most interesting shot of the film comes when Bullock finds himself trapped in St. Claire’s apartment, hiding under a coffee table after she and lover came home early while he was bugging the place. While he sweats it out under the table, St. Claire and her guest proceed to get it on on top, leading to a lot of great shots up through the glass table at them in action.

Voyeur does a lot of interesting things with it’s watcher/watched dynamic and the obsession it creates on both ends of that spectrum, but the most impressive element of all is the way it manages to be simultaneously unsettling and legitimately sexy. A lot of porn that attempts to merge darker themes with hot sex careens back and forth from one to the other, eventually negating both. Bullock’s character in Voyeur unravels before the viewer’s eyes, but never in such a way that interferes with the constant sexuality that is responsible for his decline.

For fans of: voyeurism, 80s video technology, mustaches, Taija Rae, balcony sex

Recommended related non-porn film: Rear Window

Where can I find it: Purchase here or download here